Sitting near some young people on a train on the Avocet Line the other day, I was able aurally to observe and study the dialect spoken by some of Today’s Youth. St Pythag’s Liturgical Innovation Forum Joint Working Group therefore recommends modernising the text of the Plainsong Propers to make them like more accessible to Young People.

Thus for Easter III today we will experiment with using:-

Introit: O BE joyful in God, all ye lands, alleluia: it’s like so amazing to sing praises unto the honour of his Name, alleluia: to like just make his praise to be so glorious, alleluia, amazing, alleluia. Say unto God, O how wonderful art thou in thy works, O Lord: it’s I mean like through the greatness of thy power shall thine effin’ enemies be so found liars unto thee. V. Glory be.

Offertory: Praise the Lord, O my soul: while I live will I praise the Lord: yea, like as long as I just have any being, I will I mean so like sing praises unto my God, alleluia.

Communion: A little while, and ye shall not see me, alleluia: and like again a little while, and you so shall just see me, it’s like I mean because I go to the Father, alleluia, amazeluia.

Just joking, but shows why the words we say, sing & pray together benefit from rhythm, cadence and slightly more formality than the everyday.

In an 8 hour Great British Rail Journey that would turn Michael Portillo’s jacket green with envy, we recently took what I like to call the Cathedrals Express Cross-Country service from Exeter to Edinburgh; one can count, I think, 10 Anglican cathedral cities and 14 dioceses on the journey, and the following commentary was the result. It would be nice sometime to do the corresponding Cathedrals Crawl, stopping and visiting those en route.

The family Pythag also enjoyed the wide-ranging Celts Exhibition currently at the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, including a lovely reconstruction of a Celtic chariot. How well did a Celtic chariot accelerate? It depended on the amount of torcs.

The next Pychester Short Story might start something like this:-

St Pythag’s School performance of “Lazytown – The Musical” had been excellent and surprisingly topical. In Lazytown, Sportacus decided everyone would be much healthier if they had 24/7 Sports Candy (fruit) and made the fruit growers work longer for less to provide it. Robbie Rotten’s latest austerity scheme was to squeeze the Pips of those lazy disabled kids, but he relented when Pixel arranged a social media campaign and Stingy resigned. Mayor Meanswell thought everyone would be happier if he ruled the world, especially if Lazytown were on its own planet, but forgot that Bessie Busybody really pulled the strings. Meanwhile Stephanie sang, danced & turned cartwheels, tried to hold the whole show together, and said her pink dress came from a Fairtrade offshore outlet.

Coming to his senses, Peregrine Pythag gazed through the open curtains and oblong window of the bedroom at the circles within circles of St Pythag’s Rose window, lovely even from without as the morning sun warmed the honey stone of the south aisle and transept, but at its sensuous colourful best for the Joy of Evensong on warm Summer nights.

Oh, the complexities of the Church of St Pythagoras & All Angles. The multifaceted jewel comprising congregation, choir, servers and clergy had held together during the Interregnum, welcoming a variety of well-chosen locum priests. But soon would come the Installation of their new Priest-in-Charge. For, back in mid-February, Bishop Rick and Archdeacon Idris had made an offer down at the carelessly named Blue Anchor Inn that the Churchwardens couldn’t refuse.

“What’s your website say? Traditional Church for Today – time to show it, chaps. We’ve got a lovely clergy couple looking to relocate out of London with their children. As you will have noticed, Bishop Rick has been building one of his 50 Sheds of Pray down by the River Pyke, between the Allotments and that new housing estate, Jurassic Park, where the diggersaurs tore up the grass and trees and deposited nicely spaced 4-bed homes. And now it’s fini-shed.”

“Just so, Idris. Of course, St Simon Says wanted to do the Church Plant, but it’s in your Parish; your big chance to man up for the Gospel and diversity. Don’t panic! Fr Helen knows the score; she’ll do Earthy Churchy in the Shed down by the riverside; got a smile to flutter a thousand sails; you will support her, I’m sure. And Fr Basil will look after all the priestly stuff up at St Pythag’s… unless you want… No, okay. Well, Thomas doubted at first, but he got over it, experience – touch and go, I always say – in a positive, safeguarded sort of way. Wonderful!”

“So, Fulge, Jesu fulge, as we say. The Archdeacon will effect the paperwork. See you for the Installations. I’ll expect an “Ecce sacerdos magnus” from your choir, always enjoy your bunfights. Must dash, train to London, General Synod, don’t you know. Ciao!”

Words for the Oxford Movement English Dictionary.
Cassock – elderly garment with missing buttons thrown on before the service to make you unattractive to the opposite sex. (Thanks to @theladyorganist)
Ineffably – without swearing.
Panna Cotta – Favourite dessert of Servers.
Reform & Renewal – last year’s campaign of the CofE to make it more fit for purpose.
Renewal & Reform – the current campaign of the CofE to make it more fit for purpose.
ReNewAll – the Spring slogan of Blessed John Lewis.
Spice – the variety of life.

And finally, 17th April be the day 23 years ago when Mrs Pythag and I plighted our troth either to other in the historic Church of St Edward, King & Martyr, in Cambridge, a church recently glimpsed in a couple of episodes of Grantchester.

Richard Barnes – with personal views from St Pythag’s fresh espresso of church < ;-)>>

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My thoughts on a bountiful Easter Weekend, the Walk of Witness, Tenebrae, Easter Gardens and Storm Katie, are offered in an Easter Triptych for you to open and view.

And one I wrote earlier for Advent IV seemed appropriate in memory of Ronnie Corbett

Also the St Pythag’s April never-a-Crossword.
With 36 clues, many involving a P, most mentioned in St Pythag’s Blogs
over the past 2 years, 3 in Latin, some fairly silly, not sure how difficult it will be. Good Luck! Solution in a fortnight or so.

Allow me a lighter St Pythag’s moment, with some things that might have been overheard over Easter:-

Spring, when an old man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of gardening.

Why is Jesus riding on a llama, Daddy?
Because he’s the Llama of God, that takest away the sins of the world. (Have mercy upon me.)

It’s standard polyphony where the Sops go up and the Basses go down for the climax.

Jesus said, “Mary Easter!” and Mary replied, “Ravioli” which means Pasta. Jesus said, “Don’t tango with me.”
Or in another translation, “Don’t Klingon to me, for Scotty hath not yet beamed me up.”

Our Archbishop Josephine of Stonehenge, Primate of the Orthogonal Church of St Pythagoras, was so chastened and chased by the other Primates at the Tea Party in Canterbury in January that our Genial Synod has agreed to the Quod Erat Declaration that allows interchange of clergy between our Church and the CofE. This should allow a swift end to the interregnum at St Pythag’s and other exciting developments like the Shed of Pray down at the Allotments by the River Pyke, once I’ve had time to do some further writing. And how baby Carol, born to Jo & Mary in the Choir Vestry at Christmas, came back to St Pythag’s at Easter to be baptised.

Meanwhile, if you can cope with a bit of strong language and sexual references, I recommend Realms of Glory being blogged weekly by Catherine Fox. (You may have to scroll to bottom and hit older posts a few times to find Chapter 1.)

The name of St Pythag’s actually made it into print in the Church Times Caption Competition for Thurs 24th March, as the picture of the Bishop of Dudley putting on fireman’s breathing apparatus inspired “Full smoke, flame and water protection was advisable for Little St Pythag’s Patronal High Mass.” Kudos but no chocolate.

And as Archdruid Eileen of the Beaker Folk wrote during Lent – “The Genesis [a Rock Band, m'Lord] boys were just the right age to have grown up with optimism. The flower-power bunch thought that given enough love, enough drugs, enough sex, enough flowers and enough hair, the world could be put right. There was just one problem. Human nature.”

That’s why we still need Jesus, the Gospel, and Christianity. To take God seriously, but not ourselves too seriously. In the Happy Sundays of and after Easter, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

Richard Barnes.

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The Angle C Connection.
In 1706, William Jones, a self-taught mathematician and one of Anglesey’s most famous sons, published Synopsis palmariorum matheseos, roughly translated as A summary of achievements in mathematics. It is a work of great historical interest because it is where the symbol π appears for the first time in scientific literature to denote the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. It is thought that he chose π because it is the first letter of the Greek words for periphery (περιφέρεια) and perimeter (περίμετρος). The use of the symbol π was then popularised in 1737 by Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler.

The Maths Angle.
It’s funny how the mnemonics learned as a child remain with one:-
Now I even I would celebrate in rhymes inapt the great immortal Syracusan rivaled nevermore who in his wondrous lore passed on before left men his guidance how to circles mensurate. (Published by A C Orr in 1906, the Syracusan is Archimedes who used Pythgoras’ Theorem to show that pi lay between 22/7 and 223/71) The mnemonic gives:-
Pi = 3.141592653589793238462643383279 accurate to 30 decimal places.
Other options are:-
Pre-decimal pi = 22/7 a useful approximation, but mathematically misleading since π is irrational and cannot be represented as a fraction of whole numbers.
All-day pi = 24/7 is just me being silly.
American Pie = It’s a teen R movie recurring, or that unfathomable Don McLean song from 1971.
Raspberry Pi = 3.14**@!
Piscy = member of the Scottish Episcopal Church.
Pixy = Area of an ellipse with axes x & y.
Pizza = volume of a pizza with radius z and depth a, must be deep and crisp and even.
The volume of Wine produced for the Wedding at Cana in Galilee is an exercise for the reader.

An internet search will find a countably infinite number of “maths jokes”; here are just 100 of them:-
1. There are 10 types of person, those who understand binary and those who don’t.
10. Why did the chicken cross the Möbius strip? To get to the same side.
11. What do you get if you cross a mountaineer with a mosquito? Nothing, you can’t cross a scalar with a vector.
100. Which Carol contains the largest binary number? Probably “Ding dong merrily on high … and 101010 by priest and people sungen.” That’s 42 in decimal.

Finally a Classical Physics question – What is a millihelen (mH)?
The quantity of facial beauty required to launch one ship. In the Troy system of units, obviously.

Happi St Pythag’s Day,
Richard Barnes.

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Having spent 4 blessed years at the University of St Andrews, and with Wee Frees as in-laws, I feel I know a little of the complexities of the Scottish churches, so I am saddened but not surprised that the C of E has chosen to snub and upset our Scottish Episcopal Church fellows by making a bipartite agreement, The Columba Declaration, with the presbyterian Church of Scotland, where I have friends also. (Richard Barnes, personal comments)

Dr Forster came from Chester with a cool disdain,
He stepped on the Piscies because they were frisky,
But @Synod now shares in the shame.

John Knox and Samuel Seabury look down from Heaven on the General Synod and agree, “Flippin’ Sassenachs! Where’s Jenny Geddes when you need her?”

And to paraphrase the Prime Minister in “Love Actually” – I love that word “Declaration”. Covers all manner of sins, doesn’t it? I fear that this has become a ColumBADeclaration. Based on the English Bishop & Synod taking exactly what they want and casually ignoring all those things that really matter to the Scottish Episcopal Church. We may be a small church but we’re a great one. The church of St Andrew and St Ninian, Ss Mary, Mungo & Midge, the Epiclesis, Qualifiers and Non-jurors, Samuel Seabury, Old St Paul’s, and Richard Holloway.

It seems the CofE’s “Centre of Mass” is now closer to the CofS than the SEC.

Why do Evangelicals only have 129 characters for their tweets?
Because every tweet has to start “So excited!”

A little Lenten levity to lighten the lentils, with some affectionately satirical comments on last month’s Anglican Primates’ Gathering.

Archbishop Jo King of Stonehenge, Primate of the Orthogonal Church of St Pythagoras tweets, “So excited to have been invited to the Primates’ Tea Party in Canterbury this time last month!”

Although our phantasy Church is only tangentially in communion with the Anglican Communion owing to our position on Some-Sex Marriage and the doctrine of the right-angled Trinity, it was definitely a God-moment to share firm handshakes, limp cucumber sandwiches and competitive table-top Croquet with my fellow Primates.

While the other Primates were polishing their Communiqué, I found a jotter in me briefcase and penned a wee poem to Inclusivity.

An Ode to Inclusivity
Here I am Lord, is it I, Lord?
Love one another with a pure heart fervently.
God is Love, and where true love is, God is there.
Be still and know that I am God.
Tell out my soul, the glory of the Lord.
I, the Lord of sea and sky,
Quaintly creating gender, sexuality, intimacy, love.
Companionship for all; sharing bread and wine.
So don’t give up for Lent,
Walk on with pride, loving God,
And loving your neighbour AND yourself.

Then there was the interesting revelation that Archbishop Justin was converted, not on the playing fields of Eton but by African Bishops on a mission to darkest England in the 1970s. I well remember the Partners In Mission Project which was going to revive the Church of England by getting us all dancing and drumming in the aisles. But it went much the same way as the 1960s Decade of Decadence, the 1990s Decade of Evangelism and the 2000s Decade of Dostoevsky. Only the 1980s Faith in the City seems to have left much impression on our saecula society.

No doubt the current CofE scheme of Reform & Renewal will create Consultants & Advisors a-plenty to halt and reverse the sad decline in belief and church attendance, and will appear more successful because it is downplaying the pastoral needs of the ordinary person in the pew and concentrating on ‘developing leadership’. In particular a “talent pool” will be used to ensure all new Bishops and Deans have passed their Leadership Proficiency Badge.

We all know that leaders are more enthusiastic, active and successful than ordinary people, so it is logical that by getting more and more people to be leaders, our churches will become more exciting and successful. But all can join in the Blessings of the Talent Pool; for conservatives they will trickle down, for radicals they will be widely redistributed with aspergilla, and for liberals it would be nice if we were all just a bit more wet.

I got told off for expressing doubt, but St John only wrote in his Epistle that perfect Love casteth out fear, not that perfect Faith is without doubt or questions, nor that perfect Hope is without disappointment and occasional failure.

After Tea we shared in a time of a Service of Choral Evensong with Evening Prayer Ministry.

Lambeth Place tweeted – So excited; Good news as the Church of England firms up its mission position on Traditional Marriage.

The Alpha male of the troop sang:-
Lord, now lettest Thou Thy Primates depart in peace, according to my wish.
For mine eyes have seen our Communiqué, which we have prepared before the face of straight people; to be a light to lighten the liberals, and to be the glory of Thy people evangelical.
And the Primates responded:-
True men shall rise up like David and Solomon, except these days they will have to be satisfied with one wife and no concubines.

Hallow Magazine reported that Treasurers and Organists throughout the country were hugely disappointed that they would be missing out on the sudden windfall of Fees that could have resulted from the Church of England offering Same-Sex Marriage Services.

On a Serious Note:- For a Proper Reflection on the Aftermath of the Anglican Primates’ Gathering, please come to the St Michael’s Lecture by Revd Dr Barry Norris at 7.30pm on Wed 16 March.

On another Serious Note:- In a St Michael’s Lecture at 7.30pm on Wed 24 February, Br Michael Jerome will ask whether the Church is any better or worse than Society at large in its support for, or prejudice against, people with mental illness.

And finally, the Pythgoras Institute of Indisciplinary Studies has discovered in the Codex Dinhamensis two additional verses to the well-known 1970s children’s worship song “If I were a Butterfly” for use by Servers and Choristers.

If I were a Thurible, I’d thank you Lord for my sweet smoke,
If I were an Aspegillum, I’d spread your Holy Water over folk,
And if I were a Candlestick, I’d thank you Lord for my fine wick,
But I just thank you Father for making me me.
‘Cos you gave me a cassock and you gave me a cotta,
You gave me Jesus and you made me your Server,
And I just thank you Father for making me me.

If I were a Soprano, I’d thank you Lord for my high notes,
If I were a Tenor or a Bass, I’d thank you Lord for my poise and grace,
And if I were a fine Alto, I’d thank you Lord when I got a different note,
But I just thank you Father for making me me.
‘Cos you gave me a cassock and you gave me a surplice,
You gave me Plainsong Propers, and the prayer that Jesus tortoise,
And I just thank you Father for making me doh ray me.

Happy Lent.

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Easter came late to the fictitious Church of St Pythagoras & All Angles in the Diocese of Pychester this year. Lent started a week late at St Peregrine’s Cathedral as Dean Arius and Sister Tius were away on Retreat; an Alpine ski retreat with the catechumens of the confirmation class considering the spiritual similarities of the downhill slalom to the game of croquet. Rather than shorten Lent, using the so-called Fast Forward option, the whole Diocese decided to grow beards and keep Easter Julian calendar style with the Orthodox Church on 12th April.

With our best robes and bonnets, chanting, incense, hundreds of candles and tables groaning with food and drink, the Easter Vigil at St Pythag’s to my fanciful eye looks rather like a banquet in the Great Hall at Hogwarts. Indeed, the purple robe, spear and stone have all played their hallowed parts in the story of the Passion and the love of Christ has triumphed, harrowing hell and dispelling the darknesses of this world with the grace and glory of his Resurrection. Alleluia!

A few relevant words for the Oxford Movement English Dictionary ;-)>>
Church Plant – the trendy way of being Church, especially useful for clergy bored with a grumpy old Parish and looking for a new model to revive their flagging liturgy.
Episcopally – friendly with the Bishop, or a narrow Dickensian street where Bishops and actresses ply their trade.
Peregrinus – term used during the early Roman empire to denote a free provincial subject of the Empire who was not a Roman citizen, hence a wanderer or pilgrim.
Pilgrimage of Greys – a Saga holiday tour.
Plantagenet – even better than a Church Plant at bringing in new people, especially for a Cathedral.
Procrastination – to be defined tomorrow.
Spring – when an old man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of gardening.
Trendy – in church terms, adopting musical, management and training styles that were popular in society and business 15 years ago, and now largely discredited.
True Romance – where a Cornish clergyman might live.

Given recent events in Leicester surrounding King Richard III, it seems clear that it is not Church Plants but the Church Plantagenet that will bring in new worshippers. Nevertheless, inspired by the beauty of St Pythag’s Easter Garden, our Bishop of Pychester has taken up the challenge, issued recently by the Bishop of London, to be the new Bishop for Church Plants. After pottering around his Palace gardens during Lent with a copy of “A Brief History of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme”, Bishop Rick is ready to modernise the Diocese this Spring by establishing the Fellowship of Saints Bill & Ben and the Blessed Weed to prick out and pot on radical young disciples for the task.

Church Planting has a long and diverse history; not justin the Early Church, but with Saints Francis and Dominic stirring up the complacent 13th century Catholic church with their make do & mendicant orders of Friars and Preachers, and with Whitefield and the Wesleys riding rough-shod over the sleepy 18th century CofE to build Methodism. In response to the Industrial Revolution, numerous inner-city Anglo-Catholic Parishes were spawned as the Victorian Oxford Movement took root.

Bishop Rick has been busy trying to replace the complicated and controversial theories of the Atonement with theories of the Allotment. But he found there an equally wide spectrum, from the infra-Liberal ‘weeds are plants too’, to the ultra-Calvinist ‘selecting only the perfect’ for the Flower and Produce Judgement. From the Garden of Eden to images of wheat & tares growing together, pruning for more fruit, and Mary Magdalen meeting the risen Jesus in the Garden, there’s plenteous food for thought. Is God the Groundforce of our being, and just how much incense does it take to fumigate the Potting Shed?

So, the plan is, those churches that were successful in bids to the Thatch Repair Fund are safe, but, given the shortage of affordable barn conversions in the diocese, many listed chocolate-box churches with only a few toffees and humbugs left in their congregations will be sold off to our friends in the City for redevelopment.

This financial windfall will fund the building of 50 Sheds of Pray on village greens and allotments across the county, equipped with state-of-the-art sound systems and giant display screens, replacing troublesome musicians and boring old books. This will be especially useful for Baptism Services, when the Font size can be adjusted to fit the baby, and, with virtual reality headsets, adults can even opt for the total immersion experience.

Indeed, we foresee the day when multi-sensory headsets will mean that everyone can worship at home or on the golf course or moor or beach, with the sacrament delivered by 3-D printer. To this end, as Parish Priests retire they will be replaced by Sacrament Facilitators based in the Diocesan Centre of Online Liturgy (COOL). To oversee consistency with the Archiepiscopal Mainframe, we are advertising for a Director of Digital Mission Facilitation.

“Are you fed up with PCC Meetings? Bored with Parish Ministry? Do you think pastoral work is so passé? Rejuvenate your career with our Mission position. Well-equipped office, attractive salary and secretary. You could overturn decades of faithful informed local ministry, clone Shed-based fresh infusions of church in far-flung corners of the Diocese, and be back in time for Choral Evensong in the Cathedral.”

Now, our Cathedral of St Peregrine may not have a mediaeval monarch to rebury, but under its car park lie our Roman Baths and Temple of Mithras. With generous funding from Wessex Olde Things and the Big Raffle, we had planned to develop these as an exclusive spiritual health spa and gym, a fresh expression of muscular Christianity, until someone mentioned the recent bad events at Pagford (where were the churches?). It looks like we will have to go with a multi-sensory 4-D interactive virtual pilgrimage “Festivals of Wessex” from Stonehenge to Glastonbury and a Heritage Garden Centre for Church Plants.

After the success of “Italy Unpacked” on the BBC, Spring on PyTV will feature the popular Food & Travel programme “O Taste and See” exploring Wessex from the ancient croquet playing Cerne Abbas Giant to the sun-worshipping surfers of St Ives. Andy (I look at things) and George (I cook things) will travel the highways and by-ways of the West Country in search of the best in art, food and religion. Will they be visiting your cathedral refectory, church, festival or allotment shed?

The Science Angle.
How to remember the Colours of the Rainbow. The church horticultural is no longer comfortable with the aggressive associations of “battle” and “violet”, nor with the imperial tone of purple, preferring the more gentle lilac, so the revised common mnemonic will be:-
(Son of) Richard Of York Got (re)Buried In Leicester.

Sorry if I’m a bit ambivalent about the CofE’s new-found enthusiasm for Church Plants; fine where they are truly cultivating new ground in the widest sense, but not fine to replace the variegated life of our Parishes with a liturgically-modified monoculture of clones of the Holy Top Brand franchise.

Hope you have had a Happy and Joyful Easter,
Richard the Barnes.

For a more elegant and ultimately hopeful satire on the future of the Church of England, try the following little story from Prof Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford:- Sorry, this link is no longer available.
Faith in the Free-Market: A Cautionary Tale.

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In the spirit of such reports, I have been developing a Lent Discipleship Course with our sister church, Santa Croce in Extremis, based on the game of Croquet, beloved of Edwardian Vicarage lawns. The Genesis of Croquet is hidden in the long grass of time, but when I did Croquet it was played by earnest young men and intelligent little old ladies; a microcosm of the CofE in its heyday.

Croquet is like a cross between Snooker and Quidditch, played on grass, and is a parable of the religious life with many hoops to be run, hopefully with a partner ball, before you peg out. Each of the 6 hoops offers the disciple 2 spiritual lessons.

1. Liturgical colours – save for purple (Advent/Lent), the balls cover the whole set of liturgical colours; blue (Our Lady) and black (All Souls) play red (Martyrs) and yellow (golden Christmas & Easter), while in a second game white (Our Lord) and pink (Gaudete/Laetare) play brown (Lenten Array) and green (Trinity/Ordinary). I can sing a rainbow.

2. Integrities – with primary and secondary colours, 2 games can be played on the same lawn; like 2 Integrities in the same Church.

3. Roquet – when one ball strikes another; useful for puns like “Roquet of Ages, cleft for me” and “What cheese do croquet players like? Roquefort”.

4. Croquet – place your ball against the roqueted ball and strike it so both move; you will achieve more by playing constructively to build a break using balls of many colours, rather than banishing balls to the long grass, however tempting it may seem.

5. Temptation – even though the CofE has written the Devil out of its Baptism promises, the Dark Lord will still try and tempt you by “laying a tice”; playing his ball a tempting distance from yours to entice you to shoot and miss and hinder your progress around the course.

6. Fellowship – to win at Croquet, you have to help your partner ball to run all the hoops as well as you; isn’t the Christian life a bit like a game of Croquet?

At this half-way point the course offers a variety of activities, depending on which option you are playing.
a. Alpha – receive your teeth-whitening and Songs of Praise smile.
b. Emmaus – special afternoon tea with Jesus before returning to Jerusalem.
c. Pilgrim – historical visit to Stonehenge to stand where Merlin taught Dumbledore to play Wizards’ Croquet.
d. Scientist – tax-free visit to the Large Hadron Croquet facility at CERN where relativistic roquets result in non-Newtonian behaviour of the balls. Find a Higgs boson and celebrate Mass.
e. Social media – visit the Land of Pure Tea-lights that is home to the Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley for a retweet led by Archdruid Eileen.

7 (known as 1 back). Stewardship – you like playing Croquet, so consider joining the Club as a regular member; ask the Treasurer about subscription options.

8 (2 back). Disappointment (the bit some other courses miss out) – no one wins every game and very few get through all the hoops of life without setbacks; when you’re experiencing the Long Grass of the Soul or feeling short-changed by God, seek help, try changing your grip or your swing, or even change your Club, but above all persevere.

9 (3 back). Meditation – while sitting out (when the opponents are in play) you may crochet a lacy cotta for a server.

10 (4 back). Theology – from here one player can, with considerable intellectual and physical skill, peel their partner ball though the last 3 hoops while running their own hoops in a feat of joined-up play known as a Triple Peel.

11 (Penult). Inclusive/Welcoming – with the help of bisques (free turns, not soup) all ages and genders can play Croquet on a level cathedral green; is your Church – sorry, Club – a community which welcomes new players, explains how to play and offers coaching if wanted?

12 (Rover). Vespers – the end is nigh; get the thurible going so you can incense any wasps that try to spoil your enjoyment of felicity at the heavenly bun-fight.

Peg-out – and go to the club-house banquet for tea and cucumber sandwiches (Evangelicals) or prosecco and strawberries (Anglo-Catholics). Join the Lord of the Dance and do the Roquet-Croquet.

Into the growing Oxford Movement English Dictionary, I can add:-
Aga Father – the Vicar’s divine cookery course.
Chair Practice – replaces Choir Practice when a Church is re-ordered.
Choroclasm – destruction of robed choirs in the late 20th century to be replaced by worship groups.
Petanque – a French Expression of Croquet.
Subjunctivitis – a pedantic need to use the correct mood of the verb, if there be a conditional clause.
Taize – a French Impression of Church.
West Gallery Band – historical worship group.
Wolf Whistles – Tudor Organ Music.

On BBC4 Dr Janina Ramirez has been exploring Britain’s monastic history from the asceticism of the Celts to the successful organisations which flourished prior to the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century. Her first revelation was that the Celtic Church was not led by grass-roots, tree-hugging eco-activists, but by sons of wealthy clan chieftains, given land and money to found monasteries as powerhouses of prayer. Effective evangelism started with converting the king, or his wife, and then faith would trickle down through the court and out to the folk.

In a spin-off programme, PyTV presents “I’m a Celibate, get me out of here.” A dozen ascetics from all faiths and nuns compete in tasks like Baking honey & locust cakes, Strictly liturgical dancing (remember the diaphanous 1970s), the Chant, and the Great Cistercian Sewing Habit, overseen by a black-robed Scottish bishop with a Raven-headed crozier; let the challenge … begin.

The Pythagoras Institute for Indisciplinary Studies is disappointed that no fragments of “Fulge Jesu Fulge” have turned up in the Oxyrhynchus papyri or indeed in the Ipplepen Roman cemetery.

However, for Latin Lovers, our Codex Dinhamensis contains a fragment from Carmina pueri puellaeque, Children’s Songs, found in De Revolutionibus Wheelsondibus by Nickelodeon Copernicus published in 1543 just before tea-time. In particular
“Caput umeris genua et digitos genua et digitos,
oculos et aures et os atque nares”
makes me wonder whether medieval choirboys warmed up with a few verses of “God be in my head, shoulders, knees and toes” before practising
“Deus in capite et in intellectu meo, Deus in oculis meis et in aspicientibus …”, familiar to us through the music of Walford Davies and John Rutter.

Maths Angle – the Church of England is now like a quadratic equation with 2 valid solutions, see Hoop 2 above. E.g. x^2-9x+8=0, (x-1)(x-8)=0, so x=1, for those who cannot accept women as priests or bishops, and x=8, for those who have accepted women as priests and bishops. Writing a cubic equation that includes gay bishops is left as an exercise for the reader.

Punctuation Point – advert seen in the Church Times.
The Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School – Nurturing Excellence – in apostrophes, presumably!

What did the dough say to the baker? It’s nice to be kneaded.
No hedgehogs or flamingos were harmed in the making of this blog.

Richard Barnes.

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There’s a little quiz to ‘name’ the Angel-(tri)angles pictured throughout the blog. Answers at the bottom. (Views expressed in this blog are personal, light-hearted and not intended to cause any offence – RichardBarnes.)

“The bells of waiting Advent ring,”
famously wrote Sir John Betjeman in his poem “Christmas”. But another poem of his, Advent 1955,
“The Advent wind begins to stir
With sea-like sounds in our Scotch fir,”
is also worth searching out (copyright prevents reprinting). At that very time my parents were waiting for their Christmas baby to arrive.

I do enjoy a nice typo, and here’s a real one I spotted recently for some seasonal elf and safety training. “Health & Safety for Mangers” – presumably that would be for Mary & Joseph and others with line(age) management responsibilities.

Into the growing, or groaning, Oxford Movement English Dictionary, I’ve been asked to add:-
Apse – a download for your smartphone or tablet to upgrade its architecture.
Messy Solennelle – a Catholic version of Messy Church.
O Llama God – a version of the Agnus Dei for use with the Peruvian Gloria.
L’Église – a French Expression of Church.

On PyTV, look out for the Apse Factor. The final of this church architecture talent show features the classical order of Justin Pediment, the Irish Rococo splendour of Baroque O’Bama, the Victorian Gothic of Augustus Pingu, and the functional Modernism of Lars Pews-gone.

As the final film instalment of The Hobbit comes out, I recall a BBC TV presenter recently telling us that Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, regularly met with JRR Tolkien and the other Inklings in the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford to discuss their literary creations. An intriguing idea, but not ‘strictly’ true, they would never have met, their lives only overlapping by a few years. He must have meant Inspector Lewis, and Morse – only joking, C S Lewis, of course.

For some festive fantasy for children of all ages, dust off the Box of Delights (book or DVD) by John Masefield, and travel back 80 years with young Kay Harker and old Cole Hawlings to Tatchester, where the Wolves are Running, to save the Bishop, the Cathedral and Christmas itself from the evil schemes of the wizard who has taken over the theological college. The BBC adaption over 6 half-hour episodes was filmed at locations mainly in Herefordshire, and features music from Hely-Hutchinson’s Carol Symphony.

At Christmas Midnight Mass, as well as the ever poignant …
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
… so appropriate to the 20th century and this centenary of World War I (but written in Massachusetts in 1849), let us also recall “The Oxen”, a poem by Thomas Hardy published in The Times on Christmas Eve, 1915.

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

So, a Blessed Christmas to all when He arrives.

But where is the humorous, dodgy scholarship of St Pythag’s, you may be wondering?

At this time when the light of our Lord is shining, in the midst of the darkness shining, the Pythagoras Institute for Indisciplinary Studies presents “The Effulgent History of the Worship Song, Shine, Jesus shine.” In 2013 many people celebrated the Silver Jubilee of this much loved and sometimes derided opus from the pen of Graham Kendrick. But could there be a pre-history to be fabricated for these stirring lyrics and music?

By coincidence in Autumn 2013, choir members at St Michael’s discovered Codex Dinhamensis, containing a 16th century manuscript with polyphonic music and Latin words, Domine lux tui amoris lucet … Fulge Jesu Fulge, remarkably similar to Shine, Jesus shine. A performing edition was constructed and ascribed to the little known composer Giovanni di Kendrika, born in 1507 in the Italian city of Apiclapi. An accomplished musician from an early age, he is, however, now only remembered for the eventful and notorious period, culminating in the ‘Great Handclapping Schism’ of 1548, as maestro di capella of the Capella Giulia at St Peter’s Rome, predecessor of his better-known contemporary Palestrina.

Then, in a move that would be repeated some 400-odd years later, the Council of Trendi in 1563 caused a time of Choroclasm in which organs and robed choirs, in all but the most prestigious institutions, were replaced by mandolins and gruppi musici, singing sanitised versions of popular music from their youth.

Another manuscript dated Leipzig 1608 has the same words and similar music arranged as a Lutheran Choral by the German Schein, Johann Schein, thought to be a pseudonym of the little-known composer Johann Sebastian Kendrich.

Analysing the text of Shine, Jesus shine, it seems clear that two earlier works have been combined sometime before the 16th century. The motifs of the Antiphon or Chorus – Shine, Blaze, Flow, Send – are in the Christus Victor style of the late Classical period and were perhaps penned by the lyricist Tinned Rice of the Ambrosian school of hymnography in the 4th century, or else Venantius Unfortunatus in the 6th. However the ideas of inundation and worship of Sun and River suggest to me an origin way, way back many centuries earlier in Ancient Egypt.

Some New-Age devotees have suggested various pagan origins in river cults such as Tyne Geordie Tyne or Rhein Mädchen Rhein, but, like much else, these cannot be traced back beyond post-Enlightenment Romanticism.

The verses, by contrast, seem to use a more sombre, medieval imagery – in mediis tenebris lucet, in the midst of the darkness shining; Domine venio ad faciem tuam terribilem, Lord I come to your awesome presence; per sanguinem intrabo splendorem, by the blood may I enter your brightness – or be reminiscent of the Psalmist in his darker moods. They appear first along with the familiar Tonus Kendrickus plainsong in the late 12th century Serve’em Rite, a short-lived alternative to the Sarum Rite, but somehow failed to find a place in Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer.

With this understanding of its illustrious pre-history, I’m sure we will all be much more willing to raise our hands and sing
“Fulge Jesu Fulge, replete hanc terram gloria patris,
Flagra spiritu flagra, incende corda nostra,
Flue flumen flue, inunda gentes gratia misericordiaque,
Emitte verbum tuum Domine, et fiat lux.”

Codex Dinhamensis also contains a fragment from the Confessions of St Augustine of Hippo:-
Lutum lutum gloriosum lutum, nihil omnino sanguis ad refrigerandum.
now better known set to music by Flanders and Swann.
And a lost final Sailors’ Chorus from Purcell’s opera Dido & Aeneas:-
Dido, Dido, it’s off to sea we go.

Finally a few little “Knock, knock” jokes, such as you might find in your Christmas Crackers.
Knock, knock. – Who’s there? Owen. Owen who? Owen the saints go marching in.
Knock, knock. – Who’s there? Andy. Andy who? Andy Glory of the Lord shall be revealed.
Knock, knock. – Who’s there? Wendy. Wendy who? Wendy red, red robin comes bob, bob bobbin’ along.
Knock, knock. – Who’s there? Wayne. Wayne who? Wayne a manger.
Knock, knock. – Who’s there? Wenceslas. Wenceslas who? Wenceslas train to Exeter?

Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say, Merry Christmas.

Those Angels? – Equilateral – Isosceles – Scalene – Obtuse – Acute.

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